


Every Thorn Has Its Rose

by peace_love_happiness



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Fluff, Humor, M/M, POV Outsider, implied plant death, the POV is from the plants
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-08
Updated: 2019-06-08
Packaged: 2020-04-12 01:29:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19121845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peace_love_happiness/pseuds/peace_love_happiness
Summary: Angel was a word that The Plants had heard Master Crowley say numerous times before, usually talking on the phone. They  have gathered that Master Crowley was quite fond of this Angel person, considering he wasn’t loud and scary like usual when he talked to him. No, he sounded soft.





	Every Thorn Has Its Rose

Angel was a word that The Plants had heard Master Crowley say numerous times before, usually talking on the phone. They have gathered that Master Crowley was quite fond of this Angel person, considering he wasn’t loud and scary like usual when he talked to him. No, he sounded soft. 

The Plants believed the word might’ve been happy, but they’ve never been happy, so they couldn’t really compare and know for sure.

Currently Master Crowley was talking on the phone with this Angel person. “You know, angel, I was just thinking about what we were talking about earlier and, you can still, you can still stay here if you want to, even if you bookshop’s all fixed... Humans, they don’t live in the places they work, they live somewhere else and drive or take the tube to work. It’s called a commute.” Master Crowley would know- he helped invent them. “You don’t have to, of course. Just- You would? That’s- Well, I’ll have to clear out the spare room. Tomorrow, you would be ready then too, right? Sounds good… See you soon.” 

Master Crowley then fist-pumped the air and said, “yes!”

\---

The next twenty-four hours, Crowley puttered about the apartment, cleaning everything at least three times. He also gave multiple lectures to The Plants.

“Now, someone very important to me is going to stay over here for a while. Hopefully- Maybe forever. You guys need to be on your absolute best behavior, okay? Things are going to be even stricter around here. I’ll only accept the best for Aziraphale.” 

The Plants had no clue what an Aziraphale was. Maybe it was a nickname for Angel. 

Master Crowley then executed poor Spider Plant for drooping one millimeter too much. 

\---

Master Crowley eventually left the house sometime next afternoon and returned with a man slightly shorter than him with white hair and a tan coat. The legendary Angel was here. 

“This is a nice place you’ve got here, Crowley. A bit dark, but spacious.”

“I can add light,” said Crowley quickly from the spare room, which he had carried some of Angel’s bags into. 

Angel, meanwhile, wandered into the plant room. “You never told me you had house plants, dear.”

“Oh, I’ve been collecting them since the 50s.”

“The 1950s?” Like everything else generically suburban, house plants had taken off in the 1950s.

“1750s,” replied Crowley.

“I see.” Aziraphale reached out a hand and stroked the leaf of Weeping Fig. (Despite the fact Weeping Fig was the official name of the species this specific plant belongs to, it was considered the strongest of the bunch, only shriveling a bit under Master Crowley’s harsh criticisms. The younger plants looked up to them as a hero.) 

“They’re all very nice, Crowley. I don’t think I’ve ever seen plants in this good of a condition.”

It was the first compliment The Plants had ever received. A strange feeling of warmth went through them. Was… Was this happiness? 

“Why, thank you,” said Master Crowley, who was trying not to beam too much with pride.

\---

Over the next weeks, Master Crowley and Angel often went out together, usually at least once a day. The Plants weren’t entirely sure what they did. It seemed that they mainly went out to eat and talk, which were both things they could do at home. This confused the plants.

One time Angel referred to these outings as a “date”. That caused Master Crowley’s face to turn red, despite the fact he didn’t seem to be angry. The Plants didn’t know the faces of men-shaped demons could turn red under any other conditions. This was a startling new discovery,

Despite Master Crowley saying that things would be stricter around the apartment, Angel moving him seemed to have calmed him down quite a bit. He smiled nearly as much as he scowled now. The plants found this strange, considering the fact that Angel seemed to be very different than Master Crowley. He never yelled at them. Instead he called them beautiful. 

The plants weren’t entirely sure what beautiful meant as they had never heard the word before, but they assumed it was good considering Master Crowley’s face turned good-red when Angel called him that once. 

\---

Sometimes, Angel went out by himself to go to work. That was when Master Crowley lectured The Plants. He never did it when Angel was around, saving it for his absences. The Plants soon figured out why when one day, Angel came home during one of Master Crowley’s lectures. He was lecturing a Devil’s Ivy about how it was starting to fray around the edges. 

“You need to try harder, okay?” said Crowley. “This is absolutely pathetic! You better get better or I’ll-”

It was then that Angel entered the room. “Whatever are you doing, dear?”

Crowley jumped and dropped his spray bottle. “Angel! I’m- I’m talking to the plants.”

“You talk to your plants?”

“One time in the 1970s I read a magazine that said talking to plants helps them grow.” That day was a yearly holiday in the culture of The Plants, one very similar to the American holiday Memorial Day (which is a holiday where the people are supposed to mourn all the dead soldiers, but they get it off from school and work so they just have a party and cooked burgers instead. There was no burgers or day off in the life of The Plants however, so it just kind of sucked.) 

“That wasn’t really talking, Crowley,” said Aziraphale.

“Well, then what was it?”

“That was more yelling.”

“They’re plants, they don’t care. It’s all soundwaves to them.”

“You don’t know that. Plants are smarter than they look, you know. When they say, talking to plants, they mean more along the lines of, ‘how was your day? My day was very good. You’re looking quite nice. Stuff like that.”

“That’s all boring. Yelling at them, it gives them motivation to grow. They want to make me proud, so I’ll be angry at them less.”

“Are you ever not angry at them?” asked Aziraphale.

Master Crowley paused at that. “No.”

“They say children need a bit of praise in their life, or else they’ll end up hating themselves and be miserable all the time.” Aziraphale nodded. “I’m sure it’s similar for plants.”

Crowley blinked slowly and looked carefully at the Devil’s Ivy. “I suppose you have a point. They are good plants. The best in London, if I do say.”

That was the first time Crowley had ever complimented the plants, and they felt all warm again. 

\---

Despite the fact Angel said he didn’t sleep, soon he started spending his nights in Master Crowley’s bedroom instead of his spare room which he used as a study

While Master Crowley no longer spoke to The Plants as harshly, he still did thorough inspections of them when Aziraphale was at the bookstore, carefully looking at every leaf. It was a month before Master Crowley decided to execute another plant. 

See, Weeping Fig may have been the strongest of The Plants mentally, but he was quite old, Master Crowley’s oldest plant actually (It was seven years old, which seems like a long time, but the immortality of house plants is known to nearly match those of angels and demons. Water them every once in a while, and they can live forever, doing nothing but sitting there and perhaps being a slight annoyance.) 

Eventually however, all the stress catches up. Angel’s appearance has relaxed it too much. Multiple leaves had dreaded spots in them. Crowley scowled at it, grabbed it, said, “don’t get too soft just ‘cause things are a bit nicer around here,”and walked it down Death Row.

For the first time ever, the Weeping Fig wept. Or well, felt like they were weeping. Plants can’t cry, after all.  
\---

“Crowley, where’s the weeping fig at?” said Aziraphale the next day, looking at the plants.

“Oh.” Master Crowley stiffened. The Plants knew what he was feeling as it was what they felt constantly- fear. They weren’t sure whether to laugh that their master was finally feeling what they had felt for years, or to cower at Angel. If he caused Master Crowley to feel fear, surely that meant that he was more powerful than him, more dangerous. (The Plants began to wonder if Angel was not a human, but something else. Perhaps he was a demon like Master Crowley. “It had a hole in it, you know?”

“On one leaf, yes. What does that have to do with anything?”

“I got rid of it.”

“What?”

“I got rid of it, all right? I get rid of all my plants when they’re a bit sick.” He opened the newspaper in front of him dramatically, shielding his face. 

“Crowley, you can’t just throw away a plant because it’s a bit droopy!”

“Of course you can. It’s sort of like, enforced natural selection.”

“Well, then it’s not natural, is it?”

Crowley paused at that. “No, I suppose not.”

“What these plants need are love.”

“They’re plants. They don’t even have nervous systems, much less a brain. They can’t feel love.”

“That’s the theory, yes. But theoretically angels and demons aren’t supposed to feel love, and well, that clearly doesn’t apply under all circumstances.”

“Now, get the fig from the garbage can so we can replant it.”

“Oh, I don’t actually throw them away”

“You don’t destroy them, do you?”

“What? No, I just tell them that to make them scared. There’s a lady a few apartments down I give them to.”

Master Crowley didn’t actually execute their brethren? Weeping Fig and all the others were alive? The Plants all felt like they were weeping, but with joy. Perhaps Master Crowley wasn’t so cruel after was. Obviously he was a bit mean, but there was a difference between being harsh and being a plant murderer. 

\---

The executions that were not executions ended after that. Master Crowley even brought back some of the thought-to-be dead plants. Weeping Fig wept with joy when it returned. The Plants weren’t able to see into the future, but they predicted that perhaps Crowley’s hopes were right, and him and Angel would live together forever and ever.

**Author's Note:**

> Hello. Good Omens is my new favorite thing in the whole wide world and I absolutely love it. I looked up “houseplant types” and picked the ones with the best names for this fic. 
> 
> I’m quite proud of the title for this. I was trying to find Queen songs that mentioned plants, but saw the title for Every Rose Has Its Thorn instead and I was like, “yeah, that’s too perfect.”
> 
> Crowley pretends like he’s the coolest person to ever live, but he’s actually one of the lamest. That’s why he’s my favorite. Like, a week in and that’s already the role I associate with David Tennant more than Doctor Who. 
> 
> My tumblr's [peace-love-happiness](https://peace-love-happiness.tumblr.com) and my Twitter's [happily_sad24](https://twitter.com/happily_sad24) if you want to follow me. Feel free to shout to me about Good Omens.


End file.
